SEO Metrics Explained: Which Ones To Track [A Complete Guide]

Key Takeaways

using seo metrics to track your strategy can be daunting if you're new to seo there are just so many to get your head around and with the eternal development and introduction of new seo metrics and google's constant updates it can be confusing even for the most seasoned seos by the end of this video you'll have a better understanding of which seo metrics you should be tracking why it's important for seo and how it can help your business or your clients improve their ranking in the search results hey it's emily here from fat joe where we provide seo services designed for agencies and marketing teams so what are seo metrics and why should you care about them you can think of an seo metric as a variable that captures a piece of data relevant to the performance of your pages in the search engine results seo metrics should be granular and serve as a success indicator of your seo campaigns measuring your seo efforts with metrics brings a host of benefits having an understanding of your business's current position and being able to identify the parts of your strategy that are working and those that aren't will enable you to attract more leads correct problems with your current seo strategy develop more relevant content for your audience enhance your page experience among many others let's start by looking at the link authority metrics google ranks a website based on the level of trust it believes it to have you'll get an insight into how trusted google thinks your website is by looking at the link authority metrics you can check these across your domain and your individual pages there are quite a few available on different tools but they're all measured differently and this is where it gets a little confusing i recommend that you choose one tool from this list and use this tool to measure both your domain and your page authority so that you can track this over time for example we use domain authority from moz for our services to provide a good consistent benchmark so without further ado here are the most famous link authority metrics used throughout the seo industry domain link authority metrics domain link authority metrics are those that measure the perceived authority of your website domain authority from moss domain authority or da was created by moz to measure how likely it is that a website will rank in the search results mod scores domains on a scale running from 1 to 100 with high da's representing a greater chance to rank highly to find the domain authority on mosque go to the company's link explorer and enter the name of your chosen domain the tool will then spit back its da score moss calculates da using multiple factors this includes the number of linking root domains and the total number of links coming from other sites it then uses this information to compare our website's ranking strength over time you need to understand that google doesn't use da as a ranking metric directly so it actually has no impact on a site's overall ranking performance however da is essential because it measures the quality of your backlinks and checks your site's overall ranking potential newer companies such as ahrs and sembrush have created their own metrics which they feel better represents the way that google measures authority this often leads to some confusion particularly regarding moz's domain authority and ahrefs domain rating these metrics are not the same while domain authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors including linking root domains and the total number of backlinks and turning this into a single da score domain rating or dr is ahres proprietary metric for showing the strength of a website's overall backlink profile akhs calculates dr by looking at how many unique domains have at least one do-follow link to the target website it then looks at how many unique domains those sites link to and their respective dr scores and so on to check the domain rating of any website go to ahrefs site explorer and enter the domain url you want to analyze ahrefs will then evaluate the page and provide a dr score between north and 100 in the results below the final link authority metric that i want to cover is trust flow from majestic trust flow captures a website's trustworthiness on a scale of nought to 100. the higher the score the more trustworthy the website is and therefore the higher it's likely to rank to generate the metric it first manually evaluates what it calls seed sites this includes websites such as facebook and bbc that are well known it then collects their data to determine their seed scores once it has this data it then uses it to respectively judge the other sites that it links out to websites more closely linked to the seed sites have a higher score than those more distant or not linked to all critically for trust flow the relevance of the linking sites and their relationship to the trusted seed sites matter whereas for ahrefs domain rating they don't to check trust flow head over to majestic's homepage and then search for the domain you want to inspect in the search bar provided it will then provide you with the trust flow score plus other metrics that you might find helpful webpage link authority metrics now we've covered the seo metrics you can use to evaluate your overall domain now i'll take you through the metrics you can use to evaluate individual web pages page authority also from moz is similar to domain authority in the way that it sits on a scale from 0 to 100 but as the name suggests it's used to measure the authority of an individual page page authority or pa is measured using both the quantity and quality of internal and external backlinks pa should be used to compare the authority of web pages on the same domain rather than comparing other pages across other websites next we have ahrefs url rating or ur which is a score of nought to 100 based on how strong that url's link profile is ahrefs ur is similar to google's page rank and offers a more granular understanding of how likely it is that that page will rank in the search results although ur is similar to google's page rank it's relatively simple in comparison you are juice is equally passed through every do follow link on a web page for example if a page has a ur of 100 it will equally pass ur equity to every other url that it links to from that page i just want to touch upon majestic citation flow which is a score of how many links there are to any given url whilst majestic states that not all links are judged equally the general premise is that the more links a url has the higher the score citation flow is a standalone metric may be useful in understanding how prolific url is in the number of backlinks it has however it doesn't take into account the quality of those backlinks the benefits of measuring citation flow come into account when it's used alongside trust flow keyword research metrics keyword research is the process of discovering which words or phrases users are typing into search engines when looking for products or services like yours note that keyword research metrics don't directly measure the seo performance of your website unlike other metrics that i'll mention in this video instead they're tools for improving your search engine optimization strategy first we have search volume which measures the number of times that users are searching with a specific keyword per month you can measure search volume on a variety of platforms so we'll talk about how you can do this shortly typically the higher the search volume the more traffic you can generate from that keyword now let's take a look at the variety of tools you can use to measure search volume if you check this metric across a variety of platforms you'll notice that the numbers typically aren't the same to find search volume on google keyword planner simply sign into the app and click discover new keywords google's keyword planner will then report average monthly searches for the chosen keyword in a range not a specific number so for instance the search volume for plumber is one hundred thousand to one million and plumber services is ten thousand to one hundred thousand because of the size of these ranges you need to take the search volume on google's keyword planner with a pinch of salt particularly if you're looking to rank organically some keywords are grouped if they're similar meaning that you won't always get accurate data for individual search terms there are many more detailed seo metrics tools that you can use to measure search volume ahrefs as the search volume data on ahrefs is more accurate it's our go-to platform of choice you can use the keywords explorer tool which will spit back search volume to the nearest two significant figures ahrefs search volume combines google keyword planner and click stream data to give you a more accurate result you could also use semrush's keyword overview another top rated keyword research tool which will show you the average monthly searches over the last 12 months it also displays volume trends over time this is helpful for predicting whether a keyword is worth targeting in the future keyword difficulty keyword difficulty is a measure that shows you how difficult it is for a new website to rank at the top of google for any given keyword it also tells you whether targeting that keyword is worth the investment while ranking for popular keywords is certainly profitable you may struggle to rank amongst your competition if you're competing against high authority domains keywords with medium or low difficulties therefore may be better targets with these keywords you stand a much better chance of ranking well and for multiple variations of those search terms too as before many tools report keyword difficulty ahrefs and moz keyword explorer present difficulty as an index out of 100. not rated keywords are the easiest to rank for while 100 rated are the most challenging difficulties of 40 or below are usually attainable for smaller businesses whereas keywords that are rated 60 or above are usually the most difficult it's possible but it's a slow burner semrush does things a little differently to ahrefs and mars in that it presents keyword difficulty as a percentage but the underlying interpretation is pretty much the same the higher the percentage the more challenging it is to rank for your chosen keyword you then have google keyword planner which doesn't use a quantitative measure instead it provides a verbal description of the difficulty i.e low medium or high current search position your current search position is where your website ranks today for your chosen keywords naturally a good search position would be number one but as mentioned this is often out of reach for high difficulty keywords this is especially true if you're competing against websites like amazon etsy or forbes also bear in mind that if there are a lot of paid ads against the keywords that you want to target you could wind up being pushed down to page two of the search results so always make sure to check this tracking your current search position is easy for a quick check on your current search results you can use our free tool fat rank simply download the app and add it to chrome it easily enables you to check the ranking of any web page for any keyword semrush mods and ahrefs also allow you to check your ranking for keywords but you can use these tools to monitor your rankings over time click through rate for keywords the click-through rate or ctr is the ratio of users who currently click through to a website in the search results divided by the total traffic for the keyword according to semrush a good ctr for a keyword with commercial intent is around 10 to 20 if it's lower than that then it's suggesting that the website isn't fulfilling users needs you can measure click-through rates on ahrefs which provides intuitive and in-depth information on organic ctrs and on semrush which also offers an interesting metric to sit alongside click through rate called click potential it can be found in its keyword manager and shows the predicted chance of getting a click through to your site if it occupied the top position in the search results engagement metrics each the engagement metrics i'm about to mention reference data from your actual website so it can help to determine the effectiveness of your existing seo organic traffic organic traffic is the number of visitors arriving on your website not including those that are coming from paid channels it's critical to track your organic traffic because it's telling you how many free visitors you're getting as a result of your organic seo google analytics separates traffic arriving at your site from the search engine results and other referring channels head into your google analytics account and on the left hand side panel go to acquisitions overview head to the organic traffic report where you'll see data showing how much traffic each keyword generated for your site organic bounce rate the organic bounce rate measures the percentage of users that click straight off your website after visiting just one page this page is typically your home page or a landing page search engines use this metric to understand the value that users are getting from your site the lower the bounce rate the better this is because a low bounce rate shows search engines that users are deriving a lot of value from your website and therefore it should rank higher in the search results but if the bounce rate is high and users are clicking away from your site quickly it indicates that it's not serving their needs somehow and unfortunately google will see that as an excuse to rank you lower down the search results to track your bounce rate in google analytics go to audience overview bounce rate to view the bounce rate of individual pages navigate to behavior all pages average session duration the average session duration also known as time spent on site is funnily enough the average time that users are spending on your website google analytics calculates it as the combined duration of all sessions on your domain in seconds divided by the total number of sessions to find the average session duration in google analytics go to audience overview report choose session duration from the drop down menu a high dwell time signals to google that your page is offering a really great experience which is a really important ranking factor but a word of caution you need to think about what it's really telling you yes it shows you how long people are staying on your site but it doesn't tell you anything about leads conversions or even what your users are doing now let's look at conversion metrics we'll start with the organic conversion rate you can use this metric to measure the quality of your traffic by understanding the amount of organic traffic that results in a sale you can improve your conversion rates by changing your approach to seo to find the organic conversion rate in google analytics click conversions goals overview here you can see the percentage of people converting via organic search you must first set your goals before you can track your organic conversions you may not see this metric right away once you begin tracking your organic conversion rate you'll want to compare it to other variables this includes landing page location and device by cross-correlating you'll be able to see along which dimensions your conversions are performing well and which they aren't click through rate to your website we've already discussed the average click-through rate for the current high-ranking websites in the search results here we change gears and focus on the click-through rate for your website specifically click-through rate in this instance refers to all the users that click on your site links after seeing them in the search results seos use this metric to track the effectiveness of their campaigns over time how good your ctr is depends on how you compare to benchmark ctrs for results in various positions research from backlinko for instance shows that the average ctr for the number one search result on google is 31.7 in addition you can also compare your ctrs to other neighboring search results particularly those of your competitors this provides you with an apples to apples comparison of your performance to find ctr in google analytics navigate to acquisition search console from the drop down menu click the channel you would like to view i.e landing pages countries devices or queries clicking these options will then open a table showing you the ctr for the specified channels as a percentage technical seo metrics technical seo is the process of improving the technical aspects of your website to help it rank better in the search results this usually relates to the aspects of your website's back end performance page loading speed the faster your pages load the higher they may rank in the search results to take a look at your page's loading speed you can use google page speed insights simply enter the url into the box and click analyze it'll also recommend some improvements you can make to your website to improve the page load speed if there are no issues the tool won't display these suggestions crawlability for search engines to rank a website it needs to be able to read it first a process called crawling sites with problems such as broken links and errors interrupt the crawling process this can prevent search engines from indexing all their pages and if they can't index pages guess what they can't write them factors that affect the crawl ability of your website include the site structure urls page errors as well as the internal linking structure as with other metrics i've mentioned in this video you can measure the crawl ability using a variety of tools google analytics for instance lets you check for broken links and redirects on your site without having to do so manually go to behavior site content content drill down and look for reported 404 errors ahrefs has a broken link checker which offers so much information here's how to use it go to site explorer and then type your domain into the search bar in the sidebar click outgoing links and then select broken links from the drop down menu clicking this brings up all the 404 errors on your site semrush lets you detect crawlability issues via its site audit tool to use the semrush site audit tool enter the domain url you wish to check and click start audit semrush will then provide you with a complete list of technical errors on your site in its reports including many that cause crawlability issues seo positioning metrics indexed pages indexed pages are web pages that google has visited scanned and entered into its database pages get indexed when one search engine call is fine to that page via another link on another page or two website owners manually request that search engines crawl them as mentioned if your page is on index search engines can't find them and therefore can't rank them you can get a rough idea of whether google has indexed all your pages by typing site colon your website into the regular google search bar if you have say more than 500 pages then you can also use google search console its index coverage report shows you the current google index status of all urls you own but remember that having too many pages indexed can cause issues for your seo and create competition between your pages new backlinks and referring domains measuring the number of new backlinks and referring domains is vital for seo because the quality and quantity of your backlinks are major ranking factors the more high quality backlinks you have pointing to your domain the more google will reward you to check for backlinks on ahrefs navigate to ahrefs site explorer and go to the backlinks report on the left-hand menu you can do something similar on semrush open semrush analytics tool open the backlinks tab to see the backlink profile find unique referring domains by clicking on the referring domains tab if you're using google search console you can navigate to links external links top linked pages this action shows you which of your pages have the most links from unique websites ranking keywords even though google is increasingly personalizing the search results for individual users you still need to focus on keyword ranking tracking this metric lets you know whether your current seo plan is working it tells you how well you rank for particular keywords that you can refine your current seo strategy when analyzing your keywords you want to pay the most attention to your top ranking keywords these are the ones that bring you the most traffic ensure that the content on the landing pages ranking for any of those keywords is relevant this is to make sure that you're keeping bounce rate low and the time spent on page high to find out what keywords your site ranks for using search console log into the tool and click performance scroll down to the page and click the queries tab run through all of the keywords that led users to click through to your site you can do something similar in ahrefs using rank tracker type the url you want to analyze into the search box head to the overview page this provides an output showing you your rank for each keyword the search volume the traffic your website received and the keyword difficulty as we've just seen keeping track of key metrics is crucial for your seo strategy doing so allows you to better allocate your marketing budget improve your search visibility and adapt to changes in google search ranking algorithm now all you need to do is start using them you can find more details on all the metrics i've just mentioned on our website don't forget to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more actionable seo guides